Sponsored by the fact that someone could get offended by Soc and Greaser™.

As I am sitting on my couch reviewing two fics at once, working on Brego’s Mistress part four, I am constantly reminded that eventually I can take a break from reviewing the terrible Lord of the Rings fic and go towards the slightly less terrible Girl.

…

THAT SURE AIN’T SAYING MUCH THOUGH HUH.

Anyway, this chapter is “luckily” twice as long as the former, which…at least it gives me more to say. So without further ado, let’s see from whose perspective this chapter is told.

I briefly considered doing this as a PPC mission, but didn’t for three reasons: The chapters don’t have much meat on them, I have enough fics lined up already, and I couldn’t think of a reason for my agents to feel the same protective attachment to the Enchanted Forest series that I do. Also, hi, I’m eatpraylove on the PPC Board. I’ve poked around the halls of the Library plenty of times but never thought to get a WordPress account.

Moving on, let’s start with the canon basics. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles is a fantasy kid’s book series by Patricia Wrede, focusing on Princess Cimorene of Linderwall. Linderwall is your standard Disney-style safe, prosperous fairy-tale kingdom, and the rest of Cimorene’s family—mom, dad, and six older sisters—are your standard Disney royalty, the sisters in particular.

Cimorene wants none of it, and runs away from home to avoid an arranged marriage with the equally generic Prince Therandil in the first book. Thanks to her lack of a plan and a sarcasm-blind talking frog (I swear this makes sense in context), she ends up living and working with Kazul, a dragon who’s been looking for a new princess. Kazul doesn’t mind that Cimorene isn’t a typical princess (Cimorene can cook Kazul’s favorite desserts, for example), and both of them eventually gets roped into a big mystery involving the King of the Dragons, a stone prince, Morwen the witch, and several wizards.

The whole series turns fairy tales and fairy-tale tropes on their heads—the wizards melt when you throw buckets of water (specifically soapy water and lemon juice) at them, for example, not Morwen. It’s great fun to read and deserves all the love it gets and then some.

So naturally, bunches and bunches of folks on the Internet have written their own stories about it with predictably mixed results. Thanks to Sehkmet over on the PPC Board for bringing this to my attention. The first chapter is literally a “don’t like, don’t read, please review” author’s note, so I’m going to the first one with actual substance to it.

Also, this riff will contain spoilers for the entire series, so if you’re sensitive about that sort of thing, go get the books and read them. If you’re not, or you’ve already read all of them, strap in, ready your weapon of choice, and put on your coolest sunglasses.